Data that answers important questions such as ‘where does my surname rank on the Chinese leaderboard?’ (12th) and ‘are people named “tall” actually concentrated in the northern part of the country?’. (Pshht, tiny Asians.)

Of COURSE I am. But you’ve got to look at it from my point of view; I haven’t spoken to you in years, you email me out of the blue and ask for money.I’ve spent all day trying to get this money out of the bank for you (they even tried to tell me it was some sort of “scam.”) and now you tell me not only have you read my book but that you LOVED It and you’re willing to write me a blurb for the back cover.

(Filing this title under “Sequences of words that wouldn’t have made much sense about a decade ago”.)

Do you use Gmail on OS X Mavericks’ Mail.app? Do you archive emails by deleting, cackling madly while doing so? DON’T (archive by deleting; cackling madly is still ok for now). Use ctrl-cmd-a or the “Archive” toolbar button instead.

The linked article has more details: Mail.app now automatically maps your Gmail’s Trash folder to your own, so your deleted mails will be gone in 30 days. Instead, Mail.app now recognises that “All Mail” in Gmail accounts map to your archives. (You’ll also need to enable “All Mail” in your Gmail IMAP settings, if you’d previously disabled it to save space.)

If you’ve ever tried any kind of vector-based design, watch this dude draw iOS 7 in freakin’ Microsoft Word. I didn’t mean to watch to the end, but I ended up staring at the screen for 10 minutes in slack-jawed amazement.

Also, this comment:

This guy is making iPhones in Word and﻿ I’m just sitting here trying to center my title…

Speaking of gaming, this is my favourite local gaming podcast. Well, it’s the only local podcast I listen to, and also the only gaming podcast, but it really is great fun. I do blame them for making me feel like I should be getting more gaming done, though.

I have a cupboard of unplayed Xbox games, many of which are supposed to be amazing narrative experiences — I only played an hour of the first Dead Space, for instance, and I have all three in the series, and had a major plot point spoiled for me in the years since I started; I never finished GTA 4, and am on my way to never getting past the mucking-around-and-escaping-from-cops loop in V; I haven’t even started on Bioshock 2, Red Dead Redemption, and Gears of War 2, 3, and Judgment. And that’s without thinking about the faithfully categorised “Unplayed” list I have on Steam.

Maybe someday, I guess, or maybe I’ll just go get the endings spoiled for me.

Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King’s Carrie, saying if you liked those you’ll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King’s name is mentioned.

(There were many more important, but less hilarious, bits than this quote.)

I don’t have much patience for Apple-centric tech sector analysis blogs like Horace Dedeiueieio’s* Asymco and Benedict Evans‘ — so serious! So many charts! And thinking! — but I’m being slowly won over by Taiwan-based Ben Thompson’s Stratechery. This piece arguing that new technologies like the iPhone aren’t disruptive but rather obsoletive was great. Also, I can never get enough of people making up wordterminologies.